2.

Ali slung his robes over his shoulder and regarded me, his arms crossed over his chest. "Have you ever considered brushing your hair?" he asked lightly.

I straightened up and scowled, feeling my face redden. I plucked a twig out of my hair and dropped it to the ground. "It is fine the way it is," I said sulkily.

My brother lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "Fine? You look like sparrows have been nesting on your head," he countered, though he said it very gently. His eyes moved downward. He frowned, and stepped forward. "What is this?" he asked, his voice suddenly becoming concerned. He reached for my hand. "Nadiya, what has happened?"

I remembered my cut hand, too late. Awkwardly, I hid my palm in the folds of my robes, and said, "N-nothing. I am well-"

"You are bleeding," my brother disagreed. He took my hand in his, ignoring my weak and half-hearted attempts to pull it back. "Nadiya! Did you cut yourself?"

"Y-yes," I agreed hastily. "My knife…I…it slipped." My cheeks warmed even further, and I felt tears prickling behind my eyes – at my lie to my brother, and at the fact that my treacherous face would not let me lie without giving me away. "I-it is nothing, Ali, truly-"

My eldest brother frowned disapprovingly. "It will become something if it festers," he said, and stood, laying his hand on my shoulder. "Come with me, little sister. I will take you to our mother. She can tend that cut for you."

"W-what?" I stammered. "Oh, no! No, Ali, it is nothing…I will clean it myself! Look, the water is right here!" I babbled desperately, waving my hand vaguely at the oasis behind us. I could not let him take me to our mother. Then our mother would ask what had happened, and then I would flush, and stammer, and get angry, and she would keep asking until I broke down and told her what I had done, and then she would confine me to our tent. Again.

Worst of all, if Ali insisted, our mother might make me brush my hair. I did not want to brush my hair. It would never look as sleek and lovely as my mother's or Zebah's, so what was the point in bothering? "Ali, please do not make me go-" I begged.

He stared at me for a moment, wearing an expression of concerned perplexity. Then he sighed, and relented. "I will take you to our mother's mother," he said, shaking his head in amused resignation. "But you must agree to come. I will not have my sister's hand fall from her wrist because she was too foolish to get her wounds tended to."

I hiccoughed, and hastily rubbed the heels of my hands against my cheeks, wiping away tears. "Y-yes, Ali," I agreed, relieved beyond words, and let him lead me to the tents.

Before we reached the tent circle, I slowed, biting nervously at one of my fingernails. "Ali?" I asked hesitantly. "I-I have been meaning to ask you-"

He slanted me a curious glance. "Yes?"

I lowered my hand and crossed my arms over my chest. "The gift of the phaerimm," I blurted. "Is it magic?"

Ali blinked. "No," he said, bemused. "Of course not. The gods have forbidden us to use magic-"

"Because the sorcerers of the Three Ancient Tribes summoned the djinn of N'asr, who made war on each other and turned the old fertile lands into desert," I finished. I remembered the stories, as well as he. Then my forehead furrowed in a frown. "But…we are not like the other tribes, Ali. When the caravans come, sometimes, there are mages, and we do not turn them away like we should-"

My brother's voice was sharp. "We are still Bedine," he said, in tones which brooked no argument. "We may be duty-bound to tolerate some things which the other tribes may not, but we are Bedine. And Bedine do not use magic. Magic broke the world and murdered the old gods. It is an evil thing."

My cheeks flushed at his reprimand. Still, I persisted. "But…I thought…the stories say that the gift of the phaerimm undoes the magic of Kel-Garas-"

My eldest brother lifted an eyebrow, frowning. "Yes," he agreed slowly. "That is true. That is what keeps him trapped within his tomb."

I bit my lip, thinking. "Then…if it undoes his magic…would that not mean that it is magic, itself?" I ventured. It seemed a sensible conclusion – after all, how else could magic be fought if not by magic? That was why Bedine mages were forced to leave their tribes, because there could be no defense against their magic – was it not?

Ali sighed. "Nadiya, what is this all about?" he asked. His lips twitched. "I know you, little sister," he added. "This is obviously leading up to something. What is it?"

My face was turning red again, Lathander take it. "I…I just wanted to know," I said lamely. Tears were coming to my eyes again, as well. I had hoped…I did not know what I had hoped. All I knew was that Ali had never made fun of me or thrown my things into the cooking fire, like my other brothers had. I had thought he would listen. I had thought that, if our tribe's gift was like magic, then Ali, who had the gift, could not consider magic fully evil, because that would make him evil, and that was unthinkable. I had thought that, if my eldest brother, who would be sheikh when Hammad died, did not believe magic to be an evil thing, he could stop the others from casting our sister out. "It was nothing," I added, my voice sullen. Then, because I had listened to some of our mother's lectures on being mannerly, I thanked my brother for escorting me and ducked into our grandmother's tent.

It was too warm, as always, so many oil lamps lit that it seemed that the camel-hides were one breath away from going up in flames. It also smelled strongly of verbena and poppy, and other things I did not know the names of but all of which made me want to sneeze.

There was a stooped form in the tent, sitting on a low cushion and plucking at the thread on a loom. It sat with its back to me, silent, and so I shifted uneasily from foot to foot, sweating in the sweltering heat, and waited for our mother's mother to acknowledge me.

Eventually, the old woman looked up, her dark eyes as sharp as needles. "So," she said. "One of my granddaughters. Which are you? The soppy one, or the sullen one?" She looked at my face, and chortled. "Ah, ah. Looks like the sullen one."

I tried to look a little less angry, so as to prove her wrong, but I was angry, so it was impossible to look otherwise. "Ali brought me here," I mumbled, and showed her my hand. "I...I cut myself."

She chuckled again, and beckoned me closer. "Angered the spirits, did you?" she asked, and took my hand in hers. Her skin was soft and papery, and her fingers stabbed and prodded at the cut in a way that made me grind my teeth together. "What did you do?"

When she let go of me, and turned to reach for a pot of salve, I sighed in relief. "I…I tore a leaf from one of the sacred trees," I said, breathlessly.

She shook her head and sighed. "Ah, ah. That's it?" She clucked her tongue and began to dab salve on my hand with unusual force, for such an old hag. "Well, you did your penance, so now you must pray that you sated the spirits, and take whatever punishment they give you, eh?"

I frowned defensively. "It was only an accident," I mumbled sourly.

The old woman snorted. "Hah! Accident or no, you did wrong, and now you will be set right." She bandaged my hand, her wizened old fingers binding the cloth quickly and surely. "No fear, child," she went on, glancing slyly at my face. "Mother Desert is harsh, but she knows the blood of her own. We are her children. We accept her right to punish us, but we can ask great things of her, too." She tied off my bandage, and leaned back, her sharp eyes going distant. "Very great things…"

I cradled my hand to my chest, looking at our grandmother sideways. "Will she give them to us, if we ask?"

The old woman's eyes darted back to me, and she smiled like a knife. "If you pay the blood price, she will," she told me. Then she patted me on the hand. "Now go, sullen girl. Your ancestor is tired, and needs her rest."

I knew when I was dismissed. As a girl-child – as a sullen girl-child – it was my place to go when the men or the grown women said that I must.

I went away, slowly, gnawing my lower lip and tugging at the knot on my new bandage. The air outside the tent was cooler, but I knew I would have to drink something to replenish my body's water before the heat of the day came to steal the rest of it away. I did not know how our mother's mother had survived to her age, keeping her tent so hot like that. Perhaps the gods favored nasty old women. Perhaps the gods were nasty old women. It would explain a great many things.

I trudged back to our tent, my head full of spirits, and gods, and liches, and blood, and the singing of birds.

Wait, I thought suddenly, and lifted my head, confused. Birds? What…

Then I froze, horrified. There were birds, everywhere. Wrens hopped up the windaway, chirping, and doves perched on the poles, cooing. Swallows swooped overhead, grackles squawked and pecked at the hides, and, worse of all, they were all over our tent.

I stared, horrified. It was already midmorning. Most everyone was either outside of the tent circle or, like our grandmother, already inside their tents, but the rest would be returning to their tents before long, before the heat of the day rose in earnest.

If anyone saw this, it would be taken as an omen. Suspicions would be roused, and, where ill omens and magic were concerned, not even the family of the sheikh could be held above suspicion. At best, we would be watched. Zebah would be watched.

That thought broke my paralysis, and I ran, waving my arms and shouting, at the tent. The birds broke apart in a flurry of wings, scolding me, but most did not come back, and only took their perches farther away, watching me. I ignored them, and hurried towards the open tent flap.

I tripped over a pheasant at the entrance to the tent, and shooed it away. "Go, go!" I cried, and clapped my hands at it. It lurched into a clumsy run, flaring its wings and whooping indignantly.

Once into the shade of our tent, I stopped dead. "Zebah?" I gasped.

My sister jumped guiltily, and the wren that had been sitting in her palm whirred past my head, chirping frantically. "Nadiya!" she exclaimed. Tears rose to her eyes. "I could not help it, Nadiya. I w-was just lonely, and they came here, and they were so lovely, I did not want to send them away-"

I snatched a stray feather out of the air and stared at it, my heart sinking so far that I thought the ground must have swallowed it. "Zebah," I whispered. "What happened?"

She blinked, and wiped her eyes, and hugged her arms to her chest. "I do not know, I just…called," she whispered back, meekly. "And they came."

I could have wept. In front of Ali, I might have. In front of Zebah, I did not dare. I was the strong one. I had to be strong, for her. "You cannot let it happen again, Zebah," I said hoarsely. Suddenly breaking loose of my shock, I strode forward, kicking the birds' leavings out of the sand with my foot and then tugging the carpets over them. Then I began collecting feathers. "Help me clean this, before our mother gets here," I begged my sister. "She cannot see this-"

My sister's eyes flashed with sudden, stormy upset. "But I did nothing wrong!" she insisted. "All I did was call the birds, Nadiya! I did not hurt anyone. Why should I be afraid?" Her voice rose. "You tell me I should never do these things, but you never tell me what is so bad about them. You never tell me why!" she cried, and, at her cry, I heard the crack of shattered clay, followed by a great splash of water.

I spun, to see what had happened. One of the jugs of water had split, right down the middle, and had gushed its precious contents all over the carpets. As I watched, the last few drops beaded on the clay's broken edge, and fell to the floor.

"Oh, no," I heard Zebah whisper, behind me. "Oh, no. I am sorry, Nadiya. I…I did not mean to do that. I am sorry…I should not have questioned you. You were right. Please do not be angry with me. Please?"

I could not be angry with her, and told her so, stroking her hair and murmuring words of comfort as she wept contritely. She was no longer asking why she should not have done what she had done, but, in my head, I answered her.

If the others catch you, they will kill you, Zebah, I thought hollowly, but did not say, because she was the gentle one, and she would crumble under the weight of that knowledge. Our mother, Hammad, Ali…everyone. They will tie you hand and foot, and they will put you on a camel, and they will take you into the middle of the desert, and they will leave you there, with nothing but the clothes on your back. And you will die.

And I will not be able to stop it.

Outside, I heard voices. I thought that one of them was my mother's. Oh, no. Spirits, no. Hurriedly, I took the carpet beater from its place by the door and hefted it in my hands. I thought it was heavy enough – certainly capable of breaking a clay jug. "Be quiet, sister," I cautioned Zebah. "Say nothing."

She nodded, mutely, her face still streaked with tears, and I waited until I heard our mother's footsteps, just outside the tent.

Then, taking a deep breath, I swung, as hard as I could.

Our mother entered the tent to tinkle of breaking clay, to see me standing beneath the hanging jug with the carpet beater in my hand.

Her dark eyes went wide. "Nadiya!" she cried. "What are you doing?"

I could not think of a lie, though I tried. So instead I tightened my lips and raised my chin, saying nothing. What could I say?

Our mother stared at me a moment longer. Then her face went grim, and she took me by the wrist. "Impossible child," she huffed, and hauled me towards the door. I did not resist. "Shameless! Wilful! Thoughtless! Do you have any idea of the damage you have done?"

I went to my punishment, listening to our mother's scolding and hearing our grandmother's words echo in my head. Accident or no, you did wrong, and now you will be set right.

I had angered the place spirits of the oasis, and this, I supposed, was my due.

I could only hope, as my mother raised the switch, that this was my full punishment, and not a sign of things to come.